Portland, Maine, top U.S. destination for people looking to leave Boston, report says

Portland, Maine, was the most popular city for Boston residents to search when looking to relocate outside of the region, according to Redfin.

The real estate search site analyzed nearly one million Redfin users searching for homes across 75 metro areas during the first three months of 2017. Maine’s largest city accounted for 8.4 percent of those searches by Boston-area residents.

However! More than 9 in 10 searches were for different locales in the region than the current city or town of the user. In other words, someone in Boston looked at Somerville; and someone in Somerville searched homes in Malden (it could happen).

Have you considered leaving the Boston area? People do it.

As for searches of Boston real estate from outside of the region, much of those originated in New York, Washington, D.C., and the San Francisco Bay Area.